The best part of every road trip usually happens the moment you put the map down and let the scenery be your guide.

There are plenty of reasons for a road trip. Vacation. Romance. Escape. No matter the reason, the goal is to get down the road.

Last week my wife and I decided to scrap plans for shopping on Robson Street and chowing down in Yaletown in favour of a 30-hour road trip. We laid down criteria. Had to stop for the night. Had to be a loop. No road twice.

We figured a drive to Lillooet and back would take about 10 hours. There is an obvious loop following the Trans Canada Highway through Hope to Lytton, then Highway 12 to Lillooet returning south along the Sea to Sky Highway 99 through Pemberton and Whistler.

Of course the trek had to have a name and since there was no particular theme we would just see what happened. We'd be "Livin' the Lillooet Loop."

What to drive was solved thanks to Audi Canada who provided a sleek, hot Audi S7 tester. The bad-boy five-door hatchback is anointed with a 4.0-litre, 420-horse twin-turbo V8 that propels the all-wheel-drive Quattro through a 7-speed automatic transmission. With a 1,330-watt, 15-speaker Bang and Olufsen sound system and a look that would be sure to slack-jaw the fine folks we met along the way, the car was just the rig for Livin' the Lillooet Loop.

We slip out of Vancouver mid-afternoon with plans to stop in Abbotsford where cousin Terry Sowerby, who is in the wholesale car business, wants us to meet him at a Chrysler dealership for a surprise. Good start. A relative and a "what can it be?"

En route we settle into the Audi, dazzling our senses with the Bang and Olufsen. In Abbotsford, cousin Terry is waiting at Abbotsford Chrysler with the surprise: old friend, Scott Brown, whom I last saw at the Land Rover dealer in Halifax, N.S., and who is now charming the West Coast as the dealer's sales manager. Lots of laughs, stories and the same comment from cousin Terry as Scott.

"WHY are you going to Lillooet?"

Obviously because we've never been there before and it's the namesake of our Livin' the Lillooet Loop escape from Vancouver.

After Hope, I finesse the Audi up Highway 1 along the Fraser River. A flood of memories surface as the salmon ladders, Yale Tunnel and Boston Bar remind me of that first drive to Vancouver in the winter of 1973, before the Coquihalla was finished and took the majority of traffic off this section of the Trans Canada.

Traffic is sparse save a few eighteen-wheelers and I regale Lisa with a story about getting pulled over by an RCMP officer at three in the morning in Boston Bar 40 years ago because the Cibie headlights on my new Volvo 245 were too bright.

Ahhh. Livin' the Lillooet Loop is doing a fine "remember this" job.

We turn off Highway 1 at Lytton onto Route 12 thanks to a "real map," since our iPhone, Garman and on-board navigation system are all sending us different ways to the overnight in Lillooet.

The sun is setting when we pull up at the Reynolds Hotel, a Lillooet landmark with comfortable renovated rooms and a bed set on a pedestal with steps to get in. Different, but sleep comes quickly after a tasty feed of Salisbury steak in the restaurant downstairs.

In the morning, the chatty receptionist tells us to expect snow over the mountain passes to Pemberton, then the Audi gets a workout along the next-to-deserted road.

Eventually the iconic car-road-mountain-lake shot comes into focus so I pull over on the shore of Duffey Lake. There's a Dodge Caravan parked on the side of the road and the sole occupant checks out pro-flick Sowerby at work.

"You might see this shot in The Vancouver Sun next Friday," I offer.

A chat ensues and before long we are into road trip stories. I offer him a copy of my book Sowerby's Road; Adventurers of a Driven Mind. He is delighted.

Randy Schultz is en route to Squamish to jump off The Chief, a looming cliff on the east side of the Sea to Sky

Highway. "I'll probably wear my flying suit which will let me 'fly' for about 30 seconds before I open the parachute."

Gulp! My mouth is getting dry thinking about what he said and before long the conversation bounces between Randy B.A.S.E.-jumping on Baffin Island and me getting ambushed in Kenya and that he hits speeds of up to 275 km/h in the flying suit.

He noticed the black Audi in front of the Reynolds Hotel in Lillooet earlier. I brag about it because it's not mine and that makes shooting my mouth off about its prowess acceptable.

The chance meeting is over in 15 minutes. As Randy pulls away, I joke that the book is all lies and he probably never jumped off anything higher than a kitchen table. We laugh. I cherish the moment, this filet of road trip, an encounter with a B.A.S.E.-jumping house builder from Kamloops on his way to fly off the Stawamus Chief in Squamish a few times.

I love meeting people on road trips and Livin' the Lillooet Loop has given us old friend Scott Brown, Cousin Terry and now sky pilot Randy Schultz. The rest of the drive through Pemberton, Whistler and then down the Sea to Sky Highway is idyllic. The Audi S7 feasts on the twisty mountain roads.

We pull over for a break in Squamish. I munch on a tasty butter tart I'd been saving all day and stare up at The Chief looming and shimmering in the late afternoon sunshine. Where is Randy Schultz? Up there somewhere I suppose.

As I pull the S7 back onto the highway I half expect to get buzzed by Randy in his flying suit before he pulls the rip cord and floats back to earth like a superhero.

Ahhh, the things you see and the folks you meet on a road trip like the Livin' Lillooet Loop.

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